This week the world’s wealthiest and the best-connected have gathered in Switzerland for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting. An exceedingly diverse group of business and policy titans are schmoozing, paneling, and work-shopping their way through the world’s top intractables: climate change; a tattered euro zone; and who could forget the eternally vexing problem of “Catalysing Multistakeholder Value”? […]
Sen. John Kerry used his confirmation hearing Thursday to paint an expansive picture of the foreign policy he would promote as the next secretary of State – saying economic development, climate change, and human rights must be as much a part of America’s role in the world as “drones and deployment.” Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations […]
A serious strategic partnership between Australia and India has long been a missing link in the security architecture of Indo-Pacific Asia. Now the gap is at last being filled, if a high-level visit this week is anything to go by. Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr was in New Delhi on January 21st and 22nd, to […]
They tower over the natives: martial torsos; arms with coiled-wire sinews and a combat-hardened stare. Goliath hands clutch nervously at the tote bags. These are ex-Israeli soldiers and they are in India. Haggard and weather-beaten, fresh from military conscription they come to Delhi, Goa and the Himalayas to party and regale each other with stories […]
Last weekend, India’s Congress Party, which has enjoyed power for almost nine years as the majority party in the current UPA coalition government, set down a roadmap not only for its own future but also for that of the world’s largest democracy. At a party convention in the northern city of Jaipur, it appointed the young […]
When Rahul Gandhi was formally anointed this week to the number two position in India‘s Congress Party, his installation as vice president was accompanied by the usual shenanigans among party operatives. Nine years after the grandson of Indira Gandhi – and the son of Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi – entered politics, the highest decision-making body […]
China’s growth rebound may be capped by a labor-force squeeze and shrinking resources that leave the government satisfied with rates of expansion as low as half the peak during the past decade. A pace of 7 percent to 8 percent reflects economic forces, Ma Jiantang, head of the National Bureau of Statistics, said on Jan. 18 after reporting […]
Rahul Gandhi‘s coronation speech as Congress’ vice-president gave clear hints that while he may have been officially or emotionally designated as Number Two, he would be the de-facto Number One. His mother, Congress President, Sonia Gandhi will be the patron, who would love to see him exercise all powers that lakhs of Congress workers had bestowed upon […]
In rare moments of earnestness, Rahul Gandhi has in the past confessed to a keenness to “work his way out of a job,” so to speak. The Congress party, which is something of a Nehru-Gandhi family heirloom, privileges people like himself, who belong to the First Family of Indian politics, but he himself was working […]
In the last two years India and Pakistan have managed to rebuild ties after the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks struck a devestating blow to bilateral relations between the two countries. However, the escalation of tensions over the latest incident on the Line of Control (LoC) threatens this normalization of ties. In 2012, after much discussion and deliberation, both countries […]
looking beyond borders 